The Bench Mark

Bournemouth is a popular holiday destination in the UK, especially known for its miles of lovely beaches. In summer time, on a hot day, the sands get so crowded with holidaymakers that if you want to walk along the shore, you have to carefully pick your way through the basking bodies.

However the clifftop and promenade are wonderful places to stroll and there are benches at frequent intervals, so walkers can rest and enjoy the beautiful views across the bay. The seats on the seafront are mostly painted in the town colours, either bright blue or yellow; the ones on the clifftop are stained and varnished wood, which happily blend in with the woodland surroundings. They are all well used.



Many of them have a small engraved plaque bolted into the seat back. They are memorials, which consist of a name, some dates and a few poignant words and are sponsored by friends and family.


These plaques never fail to move me. They make me think about the life remembered there, and try to imagine how that person lived. The one below is dedicated to Philip Jones, 1924-1997. Just look at those dates- I bet he had quite a tough life. He most likely fought in a war; and afterwards worked hard in battered post-war Britain, with its shattered towns and shortages. That's the common experience of people of his age. When he finally reached retirement and could just sit and enjoy the peaceful horizon, what a simple pleasure it must have been for to him.

I like this one too, for Carole Humby- a woman who built a nest of love that holds her still. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, a lovely bunch of flowers appears, tied to the bench. What generosity of spirit, how many selfless acts of kindness must she have performed to have inspired such reciprocal love.

There's one that always gives me a lump in my throat. 'Jack and Daisy Higgins, 1903 and 1912 to 1996. Loves last word is spoken.' To me, those dates tell of two lives begun separately but ended nearly together, the time in between filled with love and all it's struggles, a life not worth living for one after the other had gone. You can almost see the old couple sitting there, walking sticks propped against the bench, two grey heads close together, frail, blue veined arthritic hands still clasped.

There are many of these plaques and they have one thing in common; they all celebrate the lives of 'ordinary' people. No superstars- just people like you and me. Each plaque has been thoughtfully placed with love.

Along with the life lived , these plain metal badges also speak quietly about a part of life that most of us prefer to forget; and that's its unavoidable last chapter. Because where you have life, you have death.

All too often, death is pushed away from the mainstream of life. We like to put it in its place, in the cemetery, buried underground, or scattered away in one day of special ceremony. But death, however much we might wish it away, well- it's an inevitable part of life. It's the one experience absolutely no-one escapes. By placing these memorials on mundane benches which are used every day, the whole subject becomes somehow more acceptable, less shocking. More human. More alive. Some cultures hold that a person doesn't really die as long as their name is on someone's lips; and in that way these plaques help to cheat death just a little bit.

I already know what I want to happen when I die- I want to be rolled in a sack or a cardboard box and buried in a Woodland cemetery with nothing but a tree for a marker. I want to feed the worms and 'push up the daisies', just as nature intended.

But if I was to have any kind of a memorial, I can think of nothing I'd like better than a simple metal plate, with some kind words inscribed on it, screwed into a bench, somewhere where the wind blows and the sun shines. Some place where anyone passing by could read it. It would mean someone cared enough about me to put it there. It would be a clue that maybe I didn't waste my life, as I sometimes suspect I may have done because someone cared enough to keep my name in the arena of the living.

A reader might enjoy the moment, and their own lives, a little better for it. That's the effect those plaques have on me, because every time I read one, I get a little jolt that reminds me of something it's too easy to forget. Life is for living. Every moment of it. Carpe Diem. Sieze the day. I think Vernon Wilcox did, and that's why someone cared enough to place his name where everyone can see it. Still here in spirit, it says. I just bet he is!